Quote
By Thomas Edison
Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results! I know several thousand things that won't work.
- Source
- Edison: His Life and Inventions, by Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin, vol. 2, 1910 · Vol. 2, chapter on Edison's method in inventing, p. 616 (printed page number, seen)
- Read at
- Harper and Brothers, New York and London (Internet Archive scan of the 1910 first edition)
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About this quote
Edison's reply, as reported by his associate W. S. Mallory, when Mallory said it was a shame that after more than nine thousand experiments on the nickel-iron storage battery Edison had no results. Printed in Edison: His Life and Inventions by Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin (Harper and Brothers, 1910). It is a recollection by Mallory, not a date or a record Edison wrote. The popular "I have not failed, I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work" is a later rewording and was not found in this book.